Pausing Time
by mimirshead
Summary: Stein falls into a week long laps, and lucid dreams his way through a plethora of interactions with his weapons.


Early in the morning on Sunday, he stopped caring a bit, so he paused time, and took a nap for three days. He locked the door just in case someone managed to slip the loop. Marie knocked for about forty five minutes collectively on Monday, but gave up the following Tuesday.  
He closed his eyes, and pretended he didn't have to do anything ever again because maybe he was slipping just a little bit.

On Wednesday, Spirit picked the lock on the door, and dragged him out. He looked concerned when he was asked how he'd managed to step out of the pause. So Stein decided not to ask him any more questions for a while. Maybe his brain couldn't handle it.

Spirit plied him with beer, and Coke-a-Cola. He ignored the beer mostly. Caffeine was good for brains, and it made the noises calm down a little bit. Spirit talked a lot about meaningless things he couldn't bring himself to care about, and said he would be staying over a while.

"Give Marie a break," he'd said. Stein didn't understand what she needed a break from if she was still going to work. Spirit slept in the chair in his room. Watching over him as if he were a flight risk in the night.

On Thursday, Stein pulled him into the bed, and tangled their legs together like they had when they were kids, wrapping strands of Spirit's hair around his fingers over, and over again. Spirit endured it silently until he deemed it time for breakfast, and hauled them both out from under the warm covers, and down to the kitchen.

He made pancakes, and sausages. Another relic from times past. Marie came home as they were finishing them off, and scolded them for eating breakfast at dinner time. That's when Stein realized it was dark outside, and they had squandered the day away.

At some point that night, Marie crawled over the both of them, and cuddled into Stein's arms so they formed a strange, sideways konga line of sleeping bodies. Stein woke up with her hair in his nose on Friday morning, and Spirit drooling on the pillow behind him.

He spent that day pretending he was an airplane, lying on his back with his arms stretched out to either side, and making believe that everything Spirit said was filtered through the crackle of a radio. Spirit fed him kielbasa, and cigarettes. He admired the box for thirty minutes, staring at the words across the bottom. "Rauchen kann tödlich sein." "Smoking can be deadly."

He did a lot of dangerous things. It made him think of all the scars he'd gotten fighting nut jobs for a death god. It all seemed a bit strange when he put it that way. They spent a good hour, and a half comparing scars, and reliving old defeats. Old triumphs.

Marie walked in on both of them laughing on the bed with their shirts off, and promptly walked out again. Both of them saw a pressing need to deny her suspicions. Nothing weird had happened anyway. Nothing weirder than two grown men touching each other's healed wounds, and giggling about it like two thirteen-year-old girls comparing the sizes of their budding breasts, and thinking themselves naughty.

He took a while to examine why that simile was the one his mind provided, and determined that even with the week off he was still a bit sick with mind fever, and should probably have a lie down.

Spirit called Maka, and they had an argument until Stein wrested the phone form the man's hands, and asked her about her grades. She became flustered, and hung up when he asked her about her boyfriend. Spirit was quite offended by Stein's comment about young love being cute, and half heartedly punched him in the arm.

The three of them slept in the same bed again that night, and woke up kicking each other for the blanket at seven 'o clock the next morning. Marie dragged them both out of bed, and made Saturday breakfast declaring that Stein would get better by monday and it would be business as usual. Stein doubted his lapses would ever go away.

To prove her point, Marie dragged him to Death's Aid that afternoon to get his prescription refilled. He got very distracted putting the reindeer antlers on Spirit, and watching the man get mad. Then he cornered him in the liquor aisle, and forced him into a quick, sloppy make-out session. Like they were drunk teenagers. Stein laughed because he felt drunk.

He ended up kissing Marie, too as they walked home. But that wasn't the same. It was more innocent. Had less of the bad stuff already in it. He was scared of her, he realized. Scared because she seemed so delicate. Delicate in places he wasn't used to. Places he'd accidentally hit, and watch shatter over, and over.

On Sunday morning Spirit woke him up by tugging on his hair. Like he had when they were kids, and it was time for school. He was already dressed, jacket slung over his shoulder, and hair combed. He said he had to go to a meeting, and left Stein to curl around Marie's sleeping body, and get her hair in his nose.

Sunday was boring, and he didn't get out of bed even when Marie insisted. She gave him his pills with orange juice coffee, and flapjacks. There was too much syrup, and it ran quite a bit.

The pills made him feel better though, and he came out of it all suddenly while reading through an anatomy text book for the thirtieth time. Then he laughed, because Marie was right, and Mondays were probably a good thing after all.

Spirit called at around six 'o clock, and Stein went through four cigarettes talking to him, laughing at his stupid jokes. Lucid for the first time in a full week, he felt like he was a body pulled fresh from the ocean, no longer bogged down with salt water.

And Marie still curled up in his bed that night. Even though he was okay, and the nightmares were mostly gone. Her excuse was that Spirit had told her about his old fear of the dark, and she wanted to make sure it didn't resurface. He knew she was lying, but he didn't say anything about it. Instead, he tucked her into his arm, and pulled the blankets up farther, laughing a bit to himself because the world was ridiculous. If Marie were a sensible woman, she would have run far, far away.

She must have been just as nuts as he was.


End file.
